1 Dec
2020
1 Dec
'20
3:27 p.m.
On Mon, 30 Nov 2020, jason-tuhs(a)shalott.net wrote:
My personal opinion is that the way the Bourne shell handled flow control
is a lot easier to code for (since I wrote a version of COMMAND.COM, and
it has to have a "goto" command, and all the hairiness that goes with
needing to be able to random-seek a shell script).
-uso.
"The UNIX Command Language is the first-ever
paper published on the Unix
shell. It was written by Ken Thompson in 1976."
https://github.com/susam/tucl
Thanks for that.
This reminded me that the Thompson shell used goto for flow control, which I
had forgotten.
Bourne commented on the omission of goto from the Bourne shell, "I eliminated
goto in favour of flow control primitives like if and for. This was also
considered rather radical departure from the existing practice."
Was this decision contentious at all? Was there a specific reason for goto's
exclusion in the Bourne shell?
Thanks.
-Jason